As we reported last month, Arlington rapper Tay-K was sentenced to 55 years in prison for his role in the death of 21-year-old Mansfield resident Ethan Walker. What we didn’t report is that the lyrics to his platinum single, “The Race,” played an integral role in reaching this verdict. Yes,…
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.”— Proverbs 26:11 Now that the 50-year anniversary of Woodstock and its attempted celebration have both passed us, no foreseeable Woodstock revivals lurk on the horizon. In a perfect world, it would stay that way forever. But it won’t. Nostalgia…
Elliott Smith would have turned 50 years old on Tuesday, and the world is poorer for having lost him. In light of this occasion, many fans are only left with their reflections on the late singer-songwriter’s legacy and celebrating his artistic output. Two critically acclaimed albums, XO and Figure 8,…
On Wednesday, we published a concert review of New Orleans hip-hop duo $UICIDEBOY$, who played Toyota Music Factory on a quasi-touring festival called Grey Day Tour, which meshed both hip-hop and hardcore punk acts. There was a rather noticeable stylistic contrast, but each act earned a positive and lively reception…
There are two ways in which one can be offensive: One is by causing a disturbance in a way that targets vulnerable people, and the other is by causing a disturbance in a way that targets power. Truly constructive and historically exonerated offensiveness is achieved with an implicit understanding of…
They call journalism the “fourth pillar of democracy,” and while it can and should hold powerful individuals accountable, the profession hasn’t exactly answered the one question that is truly on everybody’s mind: How many curse words do each of Quentin Tarantino’s movies use? This question has resurfaced in light of Tarantino’s…
On Friday night, I was on assignment for a concert review at Toyota Music Factory, where Third Eye Blind, Jimmy Eat World and Ra Ra Riot performed. A fellow Dallas Observer music writer, Chelsey Norris, happened to be among the 8,000 people in the crowd, after which we conversed about…
The Tay-K saga is a tall, meaty lasagna, and to go into granular detail on it would be as exhausting as explaining to your parents who Tay-K even is. So in the interest of brevity, I’m going to pretend you, the reader, are my mother (a 56-year-old woman who listens…
It’s difficult to listen to commercial pop music with a critical mind, and that is said with no hint of irony. You would think that commercial pop’s mainstream accessibility and focus-grouped nature would make artists of the genre easy to evaluate, but if anything, the corporate nature of such music…
When emo was propelled to mainstream success in the early ‘00s, it consisted of two camps: one that was saccharine and congruent with upbeat, and one that was darker and more abrasive. The Used became one of the most commercially successful and culturally significant acts to sprout from the latter,…
The first night of Juice WRLD’s two-night stand at The Bomb Factory took place on the 15-year anniversary of My Chemical Romance’s breakout album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, and nothing could be more fitting for such an occasion. Speaking as someone who listened to the band during his formative…
In Part One of this series, we looked back on 10 significant North Texas concerts that took place between the ‘60s and the ‘80s. It was a different time, and given the importance of radio and the revolutionary introduction of MTV, the music world progressively became more of a monoculture…
We will be seeing the end of an entire decade in a mere seven months, and that warrants reflection. What artists of the ’10s captured the zeitgeist? What were some of this generation’s most defining cultural milestones? When VH1 starts airing I Love the ‘10s, what events, artists, films or…
Hip-hop is a genre where established artists become talent scouts and use their bully pulpit to develop the careers of younger artists, continually filling the genre with rising stars. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, for instance, rose from obscurity after Eazy-E took them under his wing. Kanye West got his feet wet as…
Fort Worth’s Vincent Neil Emerson has plenty of famous supporters, like his friends and fellow singer-songwriters Leon Bridges and Charley Crockett. But the country artist’s newest fan has both DC-granted superpowers and been a Dothraki leader: Aquaman and Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa. If you have “Vincent Neil Emerson…
Somewhere in Hollywood, a music industry bigwig is looking out his office window, Macallan scotch in hand, and somberly reflecting on how he could have made prodigious strides in his career had he acted on a business opportunity he initially declined. “This is terrible,” says the music executive to himself…
When artists check into a venue and finish their soundcheck, personnel will walk into the green room to either chill or get some work done. At this point, they will typically see a modest assortment of beverages, snacks and towels. This, of course, doesn’t happen by accident. Their talent agent…
Is it possible that Leon Bridges is doing too many pop-up shows? Some would argue that it is more than just “possible” and, in fact, the truth, but that doesn’t matter. Fact is, Bridges is a star, and someone of his celebrity would likely avoid somewhere as down-to-earth as, say,…
The day is Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011. The Super Bowl is being filmed from the newly constructed AT&T Stadium in Arlington. You and your friends are at a watch party for a pastime more American than a bald eagle picking at Benedict Arnold’s innards while listening to Toby Keith. “The…
As we reported back in late February, the seventh annual JMBLYA Festival will be headlined by one of the biggest acts in hip-hop, Travis Scott, as well as one of the genre’s most influential torchbearers, Lil Wayne. It’s an exciting offering every year, and one that gets plagued with curveballs…
On Jan. 22, 2017, a 17-year-old Sara King uploaded to YouTube a cover of the outro piece of “Fucking Young/Perfect” by Tyler, the Creator featuring Kali Uchis and Austin Feinstein. The video has since amassed over 110,000 views. That same month, a Twitter user by the handle @b1lue posted a…
What had started as a laid-back appearance at a Dallas festival last weekend has turned into a weeklong ordeal for Houston R&B act The Suffers, who had their band’s trailer and, with it, thousands of dollars of equipment stolen during their visit to North Texas. The Suffers had played a midday…
